


Those That Survived

by Silikat



Category: BioShock, BioShock 2
Genre: Gen, Mirrored from my ff.net
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 03:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4205856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silikat/pseuds/Silikat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Rapture dream has ended. But the story continues, for those that survived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You Must Protect Them

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I've been wanting to write for a while, about the characters of the first two Bioshock games after we leave them. It started out with what is now the second chapter, Grace, Stanley and Gil, and sort of spiralled from there. So, enjoy! Oh, and I'm taking the Good endings of both games as canon for this.
> 
> The story contains violence and character death, as well as neglectful parenting. If you are affected by this, please take care or do not read.

_Chapter One – You Must Protect Them_

To look at it, the little house was just another family home. Not all too big, no, or too rich-looking, but a normal home nonetheless. It certainly wasn’t _much_ to look at. The peeling white paint on the walls, dust on the windows, splinters on the porch and general air of shabbiness saw to that. But still, you could tell that the inhabitants were trying. In most windows, yellow bunches of flowers were displayed in glass bottles, and through the windows, rough crayon drawings on yellowing paper proudly hung on the walls of each and every room. It was as clean as its occupants could make it, and that was just fine for the citizens of Salacia Street.

They knew, too, that the man at number 46 was just an average guy. Sure, he had his quirks. He couldn’t talk, for one – he wrote notes and used sign language, which made people quite suspicious of him until they learned to pick up the language. Big guy, too, with strange tattoos on each wrist. But anyone who had seen him around his children knew that he was a gentle soul. They were the five little girls that he had rescued from a plane crash years ago, each an orphan. Each adopted by Mr Wynand the moment he got back on shore, helped by the only other survivor, a woman named Tenenbaum. She was a regular visitor to Salacia Street, showing up at number 46 at least once a month. People talked, of course, as people did. But Jack Wynand never seemed to let people’s talk bother him.

The year was 1967, and Jack had been out of Rapture for seven long and tumultuous years. In some ways, he wasn’t even sure if his time in the underwater city had been truly real – if Rapture had just been some kind of weird nightmare, and everything else was his reality. But then he found some definite, irrefutable proof, and remembered. The chains tattooed on both of his wrists, the hypos of Eve that he had taken with him, the occasional lightning that sprouted from his fingers and the dull groaning sound that he made every time he tried to speak.

It wasn’t just him that Rapture had left its mark on, of course. The girls he had taken with him were just as affected, if not more so. They had once been Little Sisters, walking ADAM factories for the people of Rapture. But Jack had taken pity on them. He took the ADAM slugs from them and left them alive, in the hands of Brigid Tenenbaum, who was trying to rehabilitate them. It was harder than it sounded.

The girls could barely remember anything from before they were turned into Sisters, and still acted as though they were sometimes. It was good for them to be around Jack, with his deep, rumbling Big Daddy voice. It soothed them, made them more open to what Doctor Tenenbaum was telling them. Despite them not being Little Sisters any more, the girls still acted as they had back in Rapture. She had tried to teach them how to be normal, how to resist gathering ADAM and fit in with surface life. It had been a long, slow process, but they eventually made it.

Some of them had kept their original names. Tenenbaum remembered two, even after all this time. Leta and Sally, who had come to her through Sander Cohen. She had worked on their cases herself, she told Jack, not quite meeting his eyes. Afterwards, she had tried to find out as many of the Sisters’ identities as she could. It wasn’t enough, she said, but she had tried. One girl Jack recognised himself – Masha Lutz, whose parents he had stumbled across back in Rapture. She looked just like her mother, once the Sister conditioning began to fade. The other two didn’t know, and Tenenbaum had no answers. They named them Rosie and Anna, and the girls took to their names without a second word.

It had taken them just over a year to be ready to face the world. Despite Doctor Tenenbaum’s best efforts, the girls were not easy to rehabilitate. But eventually, she deemed them ready. Jack was a little harder to prepare for surface life, however. He was the adult among them, even if it was only in body. He had to look after himself and the girls, earn money and be the responsible one. It wasn’t going to be easy for someone who was technically three years old. But Jack wanted to try, he signed to her one day, and he was making a good go of it.

That day, when they had first come to the surface, Jack had been terrified. Now that the WYK conditioning was broken, he could remember a little more of his former life down in Rapture. And he remembered how, like the other children of Rapture, he was terrified by the idea of the sun. It had made him oddly vulnerable, and he had stood by the lighthouse, peering up at the light with trepidation, holding Leta’s hand hard enough that she had cried out. There they stood, Jack, Tenenbaum and the Little Sisters, up on the surface with nothing but the clothes they stood in, and none of them knew what to do next.

It wasn’t long before the ship came, looking for survivors of the plane crash. And all they had found was wreckage, water, and the seven escapees of Rapture. Doctor Tenenbaum talked to them, told them that they were survivors of the plane crash. That the Sisters were now orphans, victims of the crash that she and Jack could take in. But Tenenbaum forgot to factor one thing in. She was born on the surface, she had no problem proving she existed. But Jack and the Sisters were born of Rapture, and had no documentation. It looked odd, to say the least.

In a sense, Jack had Fontaine to thank. It made sense that the girls had no identification; they claimed that their papers had gone down with the plane, with the girls’ original parents. But for him, it was more suspicious. But Jack had his papers, forged by Frank Fontaine, and suspicion passed over him quickly. Soon they reached land, and with what little surface money Tenenbaum had, they rented a little place while she tried to undo their conditioning.

It seemed like a lifetime ago to Jack. Now, of course, things were different. With care and a lot of saving, they had managed to buy 46 Salacia Street, and Jack got a job at a nearby garage. With that and the little bits of money Tenenbaum sent each month, he had raised the girls as best he could. They were never rich, but they made do.

The girls were teenagers now, the oldest being Masha at fifteen. They were all in school, and doing relatively well. For children that had never been to school on the surface before, they surpassed all expectations. Slowly but surely, they had started to adjust to having a normal life. Each girl had found their own niche. Rosie excelled in sports, Masha was incredibly popular, Anna was a budding writer, Sally had a brilliant head for numbers and Leta’s had discovered a passion for drawing. They were moving on with their lives, and Jack was proud of them.

He wasn’t doing too badly, either. It was a bit of a culture shock for him at first, adjusting to life on the surface, learning everything that was expected of him and how he was supposed to act. But if nothing else, Jack was determined to see this through. He enjoyed his work, and he enjoyed looking after the girls. They were sometimes a handful, and it wasn’t always easy. But over the years, they had come to be a family. That was enough for him.

That day, Jack had come home from work a little bit late. It wasn’t too unusual. Try as he might, Jack didn’t make a whole lot of money at the garage, and looking after the girls wasn’t always the easiest thing on his pay. The older girls, Leta and Masha, had taken part-time jobs to help out, but it was still tight, and Jack was almost always exhausted when he came through the door.

He took off his coat, throwing it over a chair as he walked into the living room and sinking down into an armchair. Across the room, one of the girls looked up at him, her light brown hair tied out of her face with a purple ribbon. She smiled, her still-too-wide eyes warm as she regarded him. He raised his hand to greet her, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.

“Hey, Rosie,” he signed. He had made his own signs for the girls early on; Rosie’s was a loop around the hair, mimicking the accessory she always wore. It always made her smile to see it, and she didn’t disappoint this time.

“Hey, Dad,” she said, before looking back down to the paper she was studying.

Jack pointed at it, frowning. “What are you doing?” he signed, knowing as he did that he wouldn’t understand it. He was not much help when it came to the girls’ homework, but he still tried wherever he could.

“Maths homework.” Rosie poked her tongue out, wrinkling her nose. “It’s hard, but I don’t really care.”

“Need help?”

The girl giggled, brushing her hair away from her face. “It’s okay, dad, I’ll just ask Sally when she gets in. You’re not so good with numbers.”

Jack sat back in his chair, closing his eyes with a contented moan. “Just remember me when you’re out at clever school,” he signed, smirking in her general direction from his armchair.

Rosie shook her head, returning to her homework. They sat there for a moment, her scribbling and occasionally staring into space, him just relaxing and hoping he would fall asleep soon. Jack’s breathing was deep, with a low, Big Daddy hum in the back of his throat being the only noise in the room. After a second, however, Rosie looked up and coughed emphatically, staring at her adoptive father with a pointed glance. It took a few seconds for Jack to get the message.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” he signed, internally preparing himself for one of those family moments that he was still not prepared for. He clenched his jaw, before looking over to Rosie and smiling about as enthusiastically as he could.

“Can I ask you something, Dad?” Rosie looked pensive, and Jack groaned internally. Yes, this was going to be a situation where he had to dispense fatherly advice. He’d only been at this ‘father’ thing for a few years, and even though he thought he was coping, he wasn’t wholly sure about how much.

“Go ahead.”

“It’s about…” Rosie glanced from side to side, before finishing her sentence in a guilty whisper. “Rapture.”

All those years ago, Tenenbaum had made it clear that they should never talk about Rapture. Now, he realised what she was doing – if the girls, with their young minds and running mouths, mentioned the underwater city at the wrong time to the wrong people, there could be trouble. The last thing they wanted was for someone to realise that they weren’t just survivors of a plane crash, to find the city and its technology and take it back to the surface. But it had instilled a paranoia in the young girls, and even now they were reluctant to talk about it for fear of the consequences, even behind closed doors.

“It’s okay, Rosie,” he signed to her, smiling comfortingly. “You can ask.”

“Okay,” she said, biting her lip. “I’m sorry, dad. I just wanna know.”

She took a breath, not quite meeting his eye. Instead, she stared at the curtains across the room, ugly and threadbare in a shade of green that nobody could find appealing. Her gaze shifted, across the flowered wallpaper and the sparse photographs of the family, to the blank ceiling. She sighed again, looking back down at Jack.

“You said we were probably born in Rapture, right? And our parents came down from the surface.”

Jack nodded, not sure where she was going with this.

Rosie tapped her pen against the desk, ink splotching onto her hand. “Does that mean we might have other family up here, and not even know about it?”

It was a question Jack had dreaded hearing, and one he had no answer for. He thought for a moment, screwing up his face as he chose his words very carefully. Eventually, he raised his hands with an apologetic look in his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he signed, and Rosie’s face fell. “We don’t know much about who you were before you were a Little Sister. You might, you might not. There is no way to tell.” His sign for ‘Little Sister’ was something he had made up himself – a quick mime of him drawing a needle out of a body and putting it to his face. It usually made Rosie at least smile to see her adopted father acting like a little kid. This time, she barely even reacted.

The girl nodded stoically. It was the answer she had expected, evidently, although not the one she had wanted. Uncomfortably, Jack clenched and unclenched his fists, before raising his hands once more.

“I’m sorry,” he signed, and Rosie nodded again. She bent her head over her homework, her hair falling once more into her face. This time, she seemed not to notice it. Jack almost went over to her, tapping her on the shoulder and offering some other meaningless signs of comfort, but it was at that moment that there was a knock on the door.

Specifically, there were three knocks – short, sharp, and to-the-point. Jack knew that knock instinctively; he heard that knock every other week, and it was always a welcome sound. It was Doctor Tenenbaum’s knock.

Rosie looked up at the sound, and gave Jack a half-smile, her brow still furrowed in thought. Wordlessly, she gathered up her homework and went out of the door behind her, her light footsteps ascending the stairs.

Jack turned, reaching out to open the door. Doctor Tenenbaum stood behind it, her greying hair tied up in a ponytail, wearing the same mustard-coloured jumper and brown skirt that she seemed to be wearing every time she visited. Her face was, as usual, devoid of emotion. She acknowledged him with a nod, and made no move to enter.

“Doctor!” Jack had no specific sign for Tenenbaum – he just called her ‘Doctor’, and she accepted that. “Come in. How are you?” he signed to her as he motioned her into the house with his head. She stepped inside, coming into the living room to perch precariously on one of the armchairs. Jack took the other one, sitting opposite her and looking her straight in the eye.

“I am well, thank you,” Tenenbaum said, her voice clipped and formal. This wasn’t too unusual, but there was something new to her tone that gave Jack pause. While he searched for something else to say, he looked her up and down, trying to assess what was different today. Her hands were clenched tight on her lap, so tight that her knuckles were white. Her jaw was set, her gaze firmly fixed on him, with her shoulders high in some kind of anxious anticipation.

“You look upset,” Jack ventured, not wanting to cause offense. He had learned a lot about what people on the surface were offended by in his time up here, and he was always cautious to try and avoid that.

Tenenbaum shook her head slightly. “Yes,” she said briskly. “This I will discuss. But first, tell me: how are the girls?” She leaned forward even more in her chair, looking at Jack inquisitively. It was always like this – before she talked to Jack about anything, she would always discuss the girls first. Despite everything, they were her first priority.

“Doing well,” Jack signed, the smile creeping onto his face as he warmed to a subject that, admittedly, he liked. “Masha got an A last week in her English exam. And Rosie has been helping me at work sometimes.” He paused, almost not wanting to sign the last part. “They haven’t called me Mister Bubbles in months.”

The doctor nodded, her mouth twitching upwards in the semblance of a smile. “This is good. Their rehabilitation is working faster than I had thought.” She leaned back a little, until her back was just brushing the chair. She bit her lip, her mind obviously on other things. “And you?”

He stopped for a moment, thinking it over. ‘Coping’ would be the best way to describe his state. He was moving forward, taking every day as it came. Dealing with the past was as easy as not acknowledging that it existed, and throwing himself into the challenges of every day. Was it a distraction? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t going to admit it.

“As well as I can be,” he signed, his grim face showing the compromise.

Tenenbaum nodded, her thin lips stretched into a worn smile. “I understand,” she said, and it seemed all that needed to be said. They were never really good at the emotional side of things, Jack had realised over the years. He hadn’t considered it at first – he was raised by Tenenbaum, as much as one could call it that, and her style of emotional detachment had registered for him as normal for the first few years of his surface life. But after a while he had grown less shy, more eager to interact with new people, and he had realised that most people weren’t like Tenenbaum. Most people didn’t immediately grow cold whenever there was a mere hint of emotion in the air. He understood why. She had told him one night, a couple of years ago, about the circumstances that led her to Rapture. It had taken him a while to comprehend exactly what she meant, as well as an hour or so of looking things up in the local library, but he understood.

They sat together, in Jack’s small living room, for a moment, the silence ringing in their ears. Tenenbaum was picking at her nails with her teeth, her eyes decidedly not meeting Jack’s. His brow furrowed as he looked on her, concern flooding his mind. He felt a sense of childlike panic, the worry a kid feels when they see their parents upset. He grunted, attracting Tenenbaum’s attention up to him.

“What did you want to talk about?” he signed, trying not to let the tension he felt show in his hands.

But Tenenbaum hardly reacted, her eyes barely even flickering over to him to read his signs. She sighed, closing her eyes as she took a deep breath. Opening her eyes, she looked him square in the face, her eyes wide and filled with anxiety. “I am going back to Rapture,” she said, her voice ringing clearly in the empty room.

“What?” Jack’s expression was aghast as he made the sign, the motion a lot more intensive than it should have been. He couldn’t believe it. After all that they had been through to get out of Rapture safe and alive, after all that they had suffered and sacrificed to make a life for themselves up on the surface, she wanted to go back? It was a terrible idea. There was no way that any good could come of going back to Rapture, even if she could find a way back into the city without attracting attention. “Why?” he signed, his mouth agape.

Tenenbaum shifted in her seat, twisting her hands together as she tried to explain. “Something is happening on the coast,” she began, her voice low and faltering – but still, she was looking straight into Jack’s eyes, fixed with a determination that Jack recognised as being unstoppable. “I hear things, sometimes. Little girls are going missing. And each time, a light from the sea.”

“You think it is from there?”

“It is increasingly likely.” Tenenbaum bit her lip, nodding faintly at Jack.

He shook his head. “But not certain.” He met her eyes, desperate to try and convince her out of this. He had no idea what he would do without her there, that was the worry that he had. He had never been a social person, given the lack of time to develop any social skills, and if he was honest with himself, Tenenbaum was the only person he ever really saw outside of work. She may not have been the kind of person that you could spill your heart out to, but she was still there for him when he needed her.

But to go back to Rapture…he closed his eyes, remembering. The claustrophobic tunnels of the city, closing him in, trapping him. The weight of the water above, threatening to crash through the glass and smother him. The silence of the dead city, broken only by his footsteps and the sound of his gun – until a Big Daddy groan echoed from some far-off room. Crouching beneath a table as gunfire cracked above his head, the sounds of splicers sharpening blades or banging pipes against the walls, calling to him, beckoning him out of his hiding place. Blood, red and bright, on the grimy floors from another faceless enemy, their expressionless mask staring up at him, its white surface covered in red and black. How anyone could go back there was nigh-on unthinkable to him.

“I have to see. To finish what I have started.” Unconsciously, Tenenbaum’s hand curled into a fist on the arm of the chair. Her gaze was unflinching, her face was lined with determination. Still, Jack was unconvinced.

“Who could be down there?” Jack’s signing was getting faster, more erratic, as his frown deepened. “The city is broken. Andrew Ryan is dead. Fontaine is dead.” Although even as he signed it, he remembered how big the city of Rapture was. There was no way he had seen anything more than a short fraction of it during his time down there. Who could tell how many others there had been, waiting there unspliced for anyone who would come their way, with their own nefarious agendas.

Tenenbaum nodded slightly, as though to confirm his thoughts. “There were…others,” she said slowly. “People who would take over the city, given the chance. And the splicers, they are stronger than anyone I have seen. They carry on.” She snorted. “Survival of the fittest, they call it.”

Jack sighed, running his hand down his face, trying to clear his head. The problem was, Tenenbaum was an adult. He respected her, both as the person who had raised and saved him and as a valuable friend. And she seemed to know what she was doing – it wasn’t as though she hadn’t survived Rapture before. But it had been so long, and the city was so dangerous. If there were any splicers down there, they would be stronger than any human could face. Putting those thoughts aside for a moment, he raised his hands to sign again. “How are you even going to get there?”

“I have my methods.” Tenenbaum sat back, tight-lipped. Jack gave her a look, and she sighed. “That bathysphere we arrived in, I have been repairing. It will suffice.” There was a note of steel in her voice, and Jack realised that he could not convince her out of this. She was determined to save the Little Sisters, no matter what it took, and no person could tell her not to. Not even him.

“Do you really have to go?” His look was pleading now, blatantly so, but Tenenbaum just shook her head.

“I have no other choice.”

Jack clenched his jaw with a slight nod. It was time to make a choice of his own. “Then I’m going with you,” he signed, trying to get the same no-nonsense look that Tenenbaum was exuding so that she wouldn’t argue with him.

“No.”

Jack began to sign, desperately. “But you need-“

Tenenbaum raised her hand, shutting off his protest. “I said no, Jack.” Her voice was firm, and he looked to the floor, sobered. “You are needed here. The little ones, they cannot live up here on their own. I am prepared, this time. I will go alone, and I will survive.” She smiled softly at him, sadness creasing the corners of her eyes. “They need their father, Jack. And so do the girls that are still in Rapture. For their sake, I need to go.”

Jack sat back, resigned to his role. Truth be told, he didn’t exactly relish the idea of going back there, but he would have done it to keep her safe. Now, as the relief that he didn’t have to washed over him, he felt a twinge of guilt at leaving her alone to face that place. But at the same time, he knew that she was strong. She could do this, with or without him. With a rueful smile, he signed to her again. ”Good luck, Doctor. You’re going to need it.”

She smiled, standing up out of her chair and smoothing down her skirt. “Look after the girls. I will see you again, Jack.” She took his shoulder, squeezing it softly before turning to leave. Jack waved at her, trying once more not to let his hand shake.

Without another word, she headed for the door, Jack following her. The silence between them was comfortable, if tinged by the weight of what was to come. At the door, they stopped and Jack waved again, bidding Tenenbaum goodbye once more.

“Do not worry, Jack,” she said softly as she stood by the door. “I will survive Rapture once more.”

He just looked at her, pity in his eyes. “I hope so,” he signed, and with that, she was gone.

As he closed the door and turned away, he could feel the dread bubbling up from the pit of his stomach. That was it. Tenenbaum was gone, and he had no way of knowing when she would be back. _If_ she would be back. Behind him, he felt Rosie’s hand on his shoulder, and as he turned her concerned eyes seemed to bore into him.

“What was that about?” she asked, head tilted to one side. “Is something wrong?” Of course she would think that, Jack mused. Usually when Tenenbaum came over she spent at least a little time talking to the girls, seeing how they were doing. The fact that she had come and gone so quickly meant that something unusual was happening, at least.

“Don’t worry,” Jack began, trying to keep his expression neutral. “Doctor is just going away for a while. She will be back soon.”

“Oh, is that all?” Rosie said, her face brightening. “Fair enough. Thanks, Dad!” She skipped away, leaving Jack alone in the empty landing, burying his head in his hands.

She would be back soon. Jack felt another prick of guilt from lying to his daughter, but that was what she had said. ‘I will see you again, Jack.’ Jack trusted Tenenbaum with everything, had done ever since they got out of the city. How could he not trust her with this? She would keep her word, he decided. She would go to Rapture and return triumphant, unharmed with a group of Sisters in tow. A hero. It was a compelling image, and a faintly ridiculous one at that. Jack smiled, sadly. But that was what she said she would do, what she believed.

He just hoped, for all of their sakes, that she was right.


	2. We Both Die Tonight

_Chapter Two – We Both Die Tonight_

Grace Holloway watched through a security camera as the train sped away from Pauper’s Drop, carrying its occupant away to the girl they had both failed. Shutting her eyes, she let herself drop into a nearby chair, mentally going over what had just happened.

Deep within her, a black cloud of guilt swirled. Delta was gone, and he hadn’t killed her. The… _thing_ she had thought of as a monster for the last ten years had stood in front of her, looking at her eye to faceplate, and walked away without even a sound. She had stood there clutching her cane to herself, willing her jaw to stay strong and her back to stay straight, measuring her lifespan in seconds, and he had just let her go. It was something she had never thought possible.

Was it true? Was Sofia Lamb wrong, all this time? She thought him a mindless brute, a creature shackled to Ryan’s command and utilised by Sinclair. But an inhuman creature didn’t have a conscience, and Augustus Sinclair sure as hell didn’t have one either. Why had he stayed his hand, then?

Grace knew Sofia Lamb would never lie to her. The woman had been her salvation, all those years ago, and she hadn’t doubted her since. But Sofia Lamb was hardly ever wrong, either, and Grace would hesitate to defy her like this.

Every time she doubted, she kept seeing that image flash before her eyes. The Big Daddy, his gun pointed straight at her, his blank visor of a face staring at her, turning to leave her alone, a Little Sister clinging merrily to his back. With a sigh, she reached out and flipped a switch on the console in front of her, turning on her radio link to the leader of Rapture herself. Leaning forward, she spoke into her microphone.

“Doctor Lamb?” Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the silence of her little secret room. “Subject Delta just came in here. He got the genetic key, I couldn’t stop him. And then he left. After all I did to him, he just left.” She swallowed her nervousness, unconsciously clenching a fist beneath her desk. “Doctor Lamb, I trust you in everything, you know that. But I don’t think he’s the monster you think he is.”

She tapped the switch again, tipping herself back in her chair. Doctor Lamb wasn’t going to reply for a while – she never did. Trusted though she was, Grace was never much of priority to Sofia these days, what with her vital work for the Family. She just hoped that the Doctor would see sense about this.

To her surprise, the radio crackled, and the piercing voice of Sofia Lamb came booming out of her speaker. “Subject Delta is capable of deceit, Grace. Ask yourself: if you were in his place, coming here to kidnap the People’s Daughter, would you not do everything in your power to get the People on your side? He may be a tin man, but he is cunning. Do not let him fool you.”

Grace looked down at her feet, her brow creasing. Sofia’s argument sounded valid, but something about it didn’t sit right with her. Wasn’t it Sofia who had told her that Delta was a tin man, capable of nothing but violence in his rampage for Eleanor? And now, she was telling her that he had enough of a mind to trick her.

Making up her mind, Grace stood once more, grasping her cane to herself. Under her desk, she knew, was a box of supplies she had been saving just in case things got really bad. But she knew that she didn’t really need them – what use did an old woman who could barely shoot straight have for ammunition? But she knew of someone else who could probably use them.

Gathering up the supplies, she deposited them in the Pneumo tube, setting the destination as Siren Alley. With a couple of adjustments to her console, she could tap into the intercoms in Siren Alley for just long enough to send Delta a little message.

Doctor Lamb wouldn’t like it, she thought as she settled back down again, suddenly bone-tired from the events of the last few hours. But what Doctor Lamb didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. And if Subject Delta was going to succeed, he needed all the help he could get. Closing her eyes, Grace drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

When Grace awoke, it was to the sound of an almighty crash somewhere in the distance. She jolted alert, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. Heart pounding, breathing fast, she went back over to her console, frantically flipping switches to try and see what was going on.

On the monitor, she could see people running – the Family, making for the train station. She frowned, switching to the cameras in there. Surely enough, there were more people gathered down there, jumping onto the railway tracks and sprinting down the tunnel.

Grace leaned over, tapping her intercom. “Family? Family, what’s going on?” she demanded, trying not to let them hear the slight wobble to her voice as she did so. On her screen, one of the Family turned to the camera, tipping his hat and giving her a sympathetic smile, his twisted face leering at her.

“Rats from a sinkin’ ship, Miss Gracie,” he drawled, his voice crackling over her speakers. “Rats from a sinkin’ ship.”

Grace stood, taking the microphone in her hand as she glared at her screen. “What d’ya mean, a sinkin’ ship?” she demanded. “Hey!”

On the screen, the man had turned away from her, darting down the tunnel with the rest of the Family. Sighing, Grace sat back in her seat and rubbed her forehead. “Oh, sweet heavens,” she murmured, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket and mopping the sweat from her brow. With an anxious bite of her lip, she pressed another switch on her console, activating her radio link to Sofia Lamb.

“Doctor Lamb? Doctor Lamb!” Grace tapped her fingers on the console, not sure what she should ask. She shook her head, deciding to get straight to the point. “What’s goin’ on down here?”

Her plea was answered only by static. Looking back to the monitor, Grace sighed. She knew what was going on, of course – it was inevitable. Subject Delta had come to take back Eleanor, and he had succeeded. Lamb was ruined without her Utopian. And so she was damning Rapture to the same hell she had to live in.

“So this is it, huh?” Grace said aloud. “The glorious downfall.”

In the distance, another booming noise shook Rapture. Now, she could see what everybody was trying to escape. Her view of Pauper’s Drop showed the windows cracking and bursting, water flooding in from somewhere to drench the ground. She sighed, shaking her head wistfully.

“I gotta hand it to you, Tin Daddy. You gave me time, alright. Borrowed time.”

Pauper’s Drop was drowning under at least a foot of water now. It wouldn’t be long before the tunnels collapsed, and the flood came for her. Grace tapped through her cameras, each one showing her the same sights – water covering the buildings, saturating what was once her home and creeping closer to her home. Out of the window, she could just make out the silhouette of a dark sphere, the easily recognisable shadow of a Bathysphere.

“Someone escaping,” she mused. “Is that you, baby girl? I can almost feel it. You’re gonna get out of here, and you’re gonna live a good life. You never asked for all this.”

With a resigned sigh, Grace turned away from the monitor, looking across her little room with a troubled mixture of nostalgia and concern.

“I came here on my own,” she continued, wrapping her arms around her body. “I chose this, and now it’s gonna kill me. Well, let it come. I’m not afraid. I did right by you, Eleanor. Now live.”

Behind her, there was another crash as the wall gave way to the pressure of the water. Grace only just had time to see the corridors of the hotel, dilapidated and worn, before the rushing ocean took her away too. She closed her eyes, a faint smile beginning to brighten the corners of her mouth. Whatever happened, Eleanor was safe. That was all that mattered.

Then the water was on her, and she could feel only the sudden pain sear across her body as she was tossed and turned in its turbulent tide. Above her, another explosion racked the fallen city, and the roof was torn away, exposing the broken glass that once protected Rapture. There was nothing but water above Grace’s little home – nothing there but the ocean and the sky. Even through the darkness of her last, struggling breaths, she could see that the sun’s rays still shone. And with a smile forever etched onto her face, Grace Holloway floated up to the light.

*

Stanley Poole sat in his booth, wiping the sweat from his face with a dirty handkerchief. His glassy eyes stared at the still-open door, where not five minutes ago Subject Delta had stood. In Stanley’s mind’s eye, he could still see the Big Daddy – his drill spinning, covered with gore from the Splicers outside, that blank helmet glowing as it looked at him, assessing him. His fingers were numb; he was still gripping the console behind him, fear locking his left hand in place. He had begged for his life, and the monster had looked him in the eye and walked away. Right now, he expected to be a red splatter on the floor. But here he was, still breathing.

A wheezing laugh escaped his pale lips, the sound little more than a breath. He coughed, and giggled again, despite himself. An incredulous smile was beginning to spread across his rat-like face, and he stood up straight, releasing his hand from its vicelike grip on the console.

“He didn’t kill me.” The words echoed in the empty room. “I-I don’ believe it! I screwed him over, an’ – he didn’t kill me!”

He wheezed once more, the breath turning into a thin laugh, nervous and quiet. His grin widened, and he laughed once more, loudly and maniacally. It reverberated down the silent corridors, the only sign of mirth that Dionysus Park had seen in many years. He wiped a tear from beneath his eye, shaking his head and leaning against the console.

“Oh. Oh, this is...what a guy. What a sap. After all I did, he just lets me go?” Another laugh, this one the loudest yet. Stanley’s grin had barely begun to fade when something started to occur to him. “He just let me go. Shit. What if he wants somethin’? What if he goes blabbin’ to...no, she knows.” He bit his knuckle, brow creasing as he thought over the circumstances.

Suddenly, he smacked his head, the gravity of his situation suddenly dawning on him. “Ah, shit! She knows!” His breathing quickened, his heart beginning to beat faster as he frantically thought. “What if he was in on it, what if...what if this is all one of her plans! I gotta-I gotta do somethin’! I gotta think.”

Frantically, he began to pace back and forth in his booth, fingers running through what was left of his hair in an attempt to think. His breathing was quick and panicked; his heart was beating faster than he had thought possible, but he put that out of his mind for now.

“Okay,” he said aloud, his voice dry. “Okay. So. She knows. She knows, and I’m dead. Oh, shit.” He took a deep breath, forcing himself to at least stay rational. “Right. I gotta get outta here. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna make a break for it.” A grin was slowly beginning to spread across his face. “See if she can track me down in hidin’, huh? She won’t be able to find me out here!”

Having made up his mind, he dashed from the booth, feet pounding down the thin corridors of Dionysus Park. All he needed was to find somewhere else to hole up, somewhere away from Lamb and her goddamned Family, where he could be safe and cosy, living off the wreckage of Rapture. He knew a few cupboards and cubbyholes that would do for now. Stanley chuckled to himself as he skidded around a corner, making a beeline for the nearest place he knew that was suitable. Just lie low for a few days until the heat was off, then he could crawl free and triumphant.

Unfortunately, Stanley was too busy congratulating himself on his brilliant plan to notice when he almost ran straight into a couple of Splicers, standing right outside the door to his little bolt-hole. Shit. He stood there a moment, completely in shock. Why hadn’t he grabbed a gun before leaving the booth? Why had he just dashed off like that? And _why in God’s name was he still just standing there gawping?_

One of the Splicers tapped his lead pipe against his hand, grinning. “Well, lookee here,” he said. “Looks like the slippery little fishy’s slipped out for a swim.”

Stanley stared at them for another second, bug-eyed, then turned tail. There was a little office just through that door. He could dive in there, hide himself. Then the Splicers would give up and leave him alone. Hopefully. He was running on autopilot now, his breaths ragged from the exercise – he had barely moved in the last eight years, let alone ran.

The doors slammed shut behind him and, thinking fast, Stanley grabbed a wrench from a nearby table, throwing it into the mechanism. That should slow them down for a few minutes, he thought, but already he could hear metallic clanging from behind him. He scanned the room for a hiding place. It was a long-neglected office, barnacle-encrusted tables stacked in one corner, a pile of crates abandoned in the other. One wall was made of glass, giving Stanley a perfect view of the outside – nice, but not really his priority at that point. He frowned, looking at the crates. There was a rusty sheet of metal propped up next to them, and a gap just big enough for him beneath the pile. Not perfect, but it would have to do. He crawled under the crates, dragging the metal sheet across to block the gap. He drew his knees to himself in the darkness, and waited.

Minutes passed, before he heard the door sliding upwards once again. Stanley held his breath, willing himself not to make a sound. All he could hear was the footsteps as the pair of Splicers searched the room. That, and the occasional dull thwack of metal on skin. He swallowed, trying to will his hands to stop trembling.

“Don’t _hide_ , little fish.” The voice was unnervingly loud, almost next to his ear. Stanley whimpered, crawling further back beneath the pile of crates. “You know I’m going to _find_ you…”

There was a rustling sound from next to him. If his mouth was working, he probably would have screamed. Instead, only a dry wheeze came out of it, and he grabbed his legs, curling himself up into a ball. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, welcoming the darkness. In the dark, he could concentrate on the noises. Clicking shoes. Shuffling cardboard. Low murmuring voices. The slow scrape of metal on metal…

Stanley’s eyes snapped open just in time to see the lead pipe gleam as it headed for his skull.

One. Two. Three times it thudded down, pain searing through his head as he thrashed from side to side. He tried to say something, tried to lift his thin arms in some sort of defence, but his body was paralysed and he couldn’t think straight. Four. Five. Six times the pipe was raised into the air, and came down to meet his flesh. The last thing Stanley saw before his world went black was the metal cylinder, coated at one end with blood and gore. He thought of Delta, and slumped against the wall.

When he next opened his eyes, it was to the crashing sound of an explosion, far away in the city. Stanley groaned, and touched his hand to his head. Pain shot through his temple, and he winced, inspecting the dark blood that stained the hand. Slowly, dizzily, he steadied himself on the ground, readying himself to himself up and away from here.

“Gotta keep goin’,” he mumbled to himself. “She’s still out there. Gotta keep runnin’.”

He tried to haul himself to his feet, but his arms were too weak, and he crashed down to the floor. Again he tried, and again he failed. Dimly, he was aware of a pressure on his legs, something keeping him down. He blinked slowly, and looked down to see the pool of blood that was spreading beneath a heavy girder, lying straight across his legs. His vision blurred, and he was aware that the pressure was turning into pain, strong and consistent, through his lower body. He wanted to cry out, but his mouth wasn’t moving.

His head lolled to one side. Desperately, he looked around for something, anything that could get him out. All he needed to do was get to one of the health stations. Not that he could walk. Or move at all. He was fucked and he knew it, but his survival instincts were screaming at him, and he needed to escape.

Again, he blinked, trying his best to take in his surroundings, despite the blur. He was facing one of the many windows out into the sea, but there was something different about it. He squinted, trying to work out what it was. And then he saw.

“Oh, no.” His voice seemed to work once more, and it echoed in the now-empty room. “Oh, hell no. No, please. Please!” His strangled screech was drowned out by the ominous cracking that came from the window. The glass was splintering, buckling under the weight of the sea. It wouldn’t hold long, he knew.

“Oh, Christ.” Stanley wasn’t sure if the wetness on his cheeks was tears or blood. “Oh Christ. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening!” But his protests would do nothing to stop the tide, and he knew it was already too late.

With an enormous crash, the window shattered. Water came rushing in, loud and unforgiving, flooding the little room. Stanley felt the wetness around his body, the crushing pressure of the sea on his bony frame, and whimpered as he realised just how powerless he was. Once again, he struggled to move, but the water was bearing down on him, and he could do nothing but watch as it took him with it, flinging him out of Rapture and beyond, sweeping his pathetic, broken body out into the unknown. And as he wailed and screamed, Stanley Poole was cast down to the ocean’s depths.

*

There was a loud booming noise in the distance. Alex the Great didn’t hear it. He was too busy looking out of the fogged-up glass of his tank, at the door where Subject Delta had waltzed out of his life, leaving him frozen.

He was used to being the master of his own little world in Fontaine Futuristics. It was him and his employees, and he was happy with that. He had so much fun, day to day! True, he couldn’t exactly leave his tank, but that never stopped him enjoying himself. Instead, he zipped around on his camerabot – his flying eye, which saw every misdemeanour and punished them accordingly. No spliced-up moron would make a mistake on his watch, no sir! Alex the Great lived up to his name. Alex the Great did not forgive, and did not forget.

Subject Delta, though, was something different. He could see the potential in that boy from the start, of course he could. Delta was going to be a real high flier in the company! He just hadn’t anticipated _how_ high he would go. All the way to the top and beyond, one of the first outsiders to actually come face to face with Alex in many years. New to the company, and already threatening the boss! He would have admired his guts, if he weren’t the boss in question.

In fact, if it weren’t for the vandalism, destruction of company property and general disrespect for authority, Alex the Great reckoned he could have gotten along pretty well with Subject Delta. The lad was goal-oriented, and audacious to the last. Not many employees could have lived through everything Alex threw at him. Delta passed through every obstacle he set him with flying colours!

At the same time, that was what had perturbed him about the boy. He had come to Fontaine Futuristics specifically to kill him, Alex realised that now. While Delta had left, there was still every chance that he would come back. Alex didn’t want to die. He had dedicated the rest of his life to the art of not dying. He _liked_ existing. The fear that Delta would come back, take the last thing Alex the Great had from him…it made him shudder, bashing his bony arms against the sides of his tank.

And there was another thing. The voice he had heard, pleading with the rogue Big Daddy to kill him. Alex recognised that voice, though he hadn’t realised it at the time. It was somebody he knew. Who, exactly, Alex wasn’t sure, and it was driving him mad. But he recognised that faltering, grovelling speech as though he had once heard it every day. The man it belonged to sounded like a subservient little fool, not enough to bother himself with, but if he wanted Alex dead and Delta listened…well, Alex wasn’t exactly able to defend himself from inside his tank. He would be helpless.

For a brief moment, he considered getting himself some bodyguards. That was what people did, wasn’t it, when their lives were in danger? And he had been meaning to beef up his security for a while, this was just a prime opportunity. But Alpha Big Daddies were in short supply, and Sofia Lamb had taken most of them to defend her area. What little resources Alex had, Delta had slaughtered his way through.

Besides, that wouldn’t stop Delta. It hadn’t stopped him before, after all. No, what Alex needed was different. He needed to get out.

It had been his idea. Of course – his ideas were always the best for the company, but he hadn’t realised initially how good an idea it was. When Delta had stood there, in front of the master console, his hand hovering over the button that would end his life, Alex had admittedly babbled. He would have said anything if it meant Delta didn’t push that button. What he had said was that he would live outside, away from Rapture and Fontaine Futuristics, on his own in the deep blue sea.

Initially, it was just an empty promise, and it seemed to work, too. Delta had left him alone, alive and unhurt. But the more he thought about it, the more viable it seemed. He could just leave. Start a new life somewhere, out there in the wide blue yonder. It wouldn’t be easy, sure. But he was the head of Fontaine Futuristics, a manager to the last! If anyone could do it, he could.

If Alex had been paying attention to anything outside his head, he would have noticed the loud cracking noise coming from behind him. He would have seen the splicers he called his employees running around and about the tank, trying to find some sort of exit. He might have noticed the room he had lived in these long years begin to fill with water, pouring in through the doors and splashing around him, carrying with it the bodies of dead splicers and the struggling, protesting figures of those still alive, as Rapture began to crumble around him.

As it happened, Alex didn’t see any of this. In fact, he didn’t know anything like that was happening until his tank tipped over, splashing in the water and cracking from top to bottom. Some debris from the roof had fallen onto the top, which broke the restraints holding it in place and sent it smashing down to the floor. Alex, inside, felt the jolt as it hit the surface of the water, and realised that he was suddenly sideways, and the liquid in his tank was beginning to rush out.

He began to panic, thrashing his spindly arms around and flailing his head. He had no idea what was happening, but some instinct told him that it was most definitely not good. As he flailed, one of his arms caught itself on a shard of glass, and he recoiled, looking at the little bead of blood that was oozing from his skin out into the water. For the first time in a while, Alex the Great felt real pain.

Then he blinked, in slow realisation. Broken glass? That meant that his tank had broken. But he wasn’t dead. He twisted around, bloodshot eyes exploring the tank’s foggy glass to find the breach. There! Halfway down the glass was broken, a jagged hole that revealed a murky black waste outside. The hole wasn’t as big as it could be, but it was enough. He tucked his arms into his body, wiggling around once more to fit himself out of the hole.

As the shards of glass passed his head, Alex closed his eyes, hoping beyond hope that this was going to work. Further down his fleshy body, he could feel the jabs of pain as the glass brushed his body, cuts stinging in the salt water. For a moment, he just stayed there, hanging still in the water, not wanting to see what had happened. Then he opened his eyes, and wondered at the sight.

Around him was the ruin that once was Fontaine Futuristics. The building was destroyed, either buried under debris or just plain waterlogged. Everything around him was water now. He looked up, and the roof was no longer there – it had fallen in when the building had cracked open like an egg.

Alex waved his tail uncertainly, twisting and swivelling as he looked around himself. There was nothing else alive around him. All the people he could see were dead, swollen and bloated as they drowned under the oppressive weight of the water. He was alone at the bottom of the ocean.

Tentatively, he moved his arms and tail, swimming upwards and out of the ruin of Rapture. He looked right and left, but all of the buildings were the same – splintered and broken, and open to the sea. It didn’t look as though anyone had survived, although looking up, Alex was sure he could see a bathysphere, heading for the surface. No matter. Nobody was alive down here, that was the main thing.

Alex’s face twisted into the approximation of a grin. Yes, this would do fine. He could remake himself here. He could be the master of his own destiny. No tank to confine him, no Delta to chase him, down in the depths where the light could not touch his eyes. He could make this his paradise, among the ruins. He could be someone here.

And, with a flick of his tail, the beast that was once Gil Alexander swam for the horizon.


	3. We Are Utopia

_Chapter Three – We Are Utopia_

The sun shone bright on the gently rippling sea, beneath a sky that was tinged with the pink and orange of the setting sun, sat in the sky opposite her. Eleanor Lamb sat on the edge of the platform, her feet dangling slightly in the sea as she watched the horizon. Her eyes were wide, her face expressionless as she held onto a Little Sister’s hand, watching as the birds wheeled in the sky before her.

Everything above her was orange, the same rust colour of the Big Daddies that she knew from her time below. It was, she decided, exactly the same – the dark clouds that spotted the sky above was like the dirt and grease that marred the ancient Daddies, the dim sun that was sinking in the distance just the glow of the lights above reflecting from the helmet. It was familiar, or at least it could be. She knew what it looked like from pictures, but nobody could have prepared her for how it _felt_. It was almost claustrophobic, the way it curved above her, trapping her on the sea; but still, it was much more freeing than the corridors of Rapture. The more she stared at it, the less she was sure.

A breeze, soft and cold, rolled across from the west. Eleanor shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. She shook her head slightly. It was so much stronger than the air conditioning in Rapture, she thought, so much more real. Out here in the open, there was no lingering smell of dirt and garbage, just a vague odour of salt. She closed her eyes, breathing it in. All her life, she had dreamed of being on the surface, and now she was here she had no idea what to do.

Behind her, the Little Sister whose hand she had dropped gently touched her shoulder, humming something barely audible. Eleanor turned her head, giving the girl a gentle smile. She smiled back, her blank eyes shining in the setting sun, and skipped away towards the other Sisters. Eleanor’s eyes softened, watching as the girls prattled among herself, before her face froze.

On the other side of the platform, standing with her arms folded and a sour expression, was Eleanor’s mother. Sofia Lamb, the once-ruler of Rapture. Now all of Rapture was the twelve people stood on that platform, and none of them under her rule.

Sofia lifted her hand, shielding her eyes from the midmorning sun. Eleanor watched, still not sure how she felt. It had been so long since Sofia had seen the sun, after all – but Eleanor was born in the depths. She had never felt things like this before. The wind in her hair, the warmth of the sun on her face, the sound of the ocean as it lapped against the platform.

_Born in the darkness, but you’re the one who sees the light._

The thought came from the back of her mind, her small, unconscious self. Was it wholly her in there, or was it her father? She didn’t know, but she liked to think it was the latter. Since she had taken her father’s ADAM, about an hour before, she had been hearing clear, random thoughts in the back of her mind, similar to the things she would usually think, yet subtly distinct. She already knew that she had his memories. If she closed her eyes, she could see them. Her gloved hands before her as she tumbled out of a Vita-Chamber, Grace Holloway behind a glass porthole, threatening her, Augustus Sinclair scuttling into a train compartment…even, if she concentrated, the sight of her own face from the floor as she wielded the ADAM needle, ready to save her dying father.

Behind her, Sofia was staring down into the water, muttering something under her breath. She looked as though she was looking for Rapture – not, Eleanor thought, as though she could see it from all the way up here. She was probably still in shock. Rapture was gone, there was nothing left for her to rule over. It was over.

Eleanor stood up, pushing herself to her feet before looking over to the Little Sisters. There were ten of them, identical little girls aged between six and ten, as far as she could tell. Their hair was dirty, their dresses were muddy and torn, and their bare feet were already wet from the waves that seemed to lap, endlessly onto the platform. As she approached, they turned as one, looking up at her with bright eyes and emotionless faces, expecting no doubt to be told what to do. But Eleanor was no leader. She had no words for them other than regret. Their real parents were out there somewhere; families mourning the loss of their daughters, disappeared while playing on the beach. Eleanor wondered, briefly, how they were going to find them. What their next step was. What she should do.

She had saved them, that much was true. It would have been so easy to kill, to force the ADAM slugs out of their little bodies and take the substance for her own. But she had kept them alive, making sure they got to the surface safely.

She had saved them, but it was not out of the goodness of her heart, nor really of her own volition. Her father had done it. Her father, a man once human, turned into a machine, had seen enough good in himself to spare the lives of these children, and Eleanor followed his example. And more; in his wanderings, he had come across three people who had wronged him. The woman who tried to kill him and took Eleanor away, the man who consigned him to life as a robotic half-man, and the man who bonded her to him, making sure he could never escape without her. Each time he had been given a chance to kill them, and each time he had spared their lives.

It was the only reason that Sofia Lamb was still breathing. She was guilty, like the others. She had done wrong to so many people, not just Eleanor and Delta. But Delta would not have wanted her to drown, right there beneath the crashing remains of Rapture. So Eleanor had saved her mother, and so Sofia remained.

Eleanor took the hand of the nearest Sister, watching her face light up with an innocent smile. She patted her on the head, sadness in her eyes. “Hello,” she said, her voice soft and quiet. “Do you know where we are?”

The girl nodded, as though she was answering a test. “On the surface!” she exclaimed with a grin. “Not in Rapture.”

“Rapture’s gone,” said Eleanor, and it still hadn’t quite sunk in yet how true that statement was. “Rapture’s gone now, and it’s not coming back. So we’re going to find someone who can help us out.”

“Mister Bubbles?” It was a different girl, this one with blonde hair just beginning to escape from her ponytail. She stood over the remains of Delta, the suit that had housed his body for so long. She felt a pang of sadness just looking at it – the corpse of her father.

Eleanor shook her head harshly. “No. A friend. You follow me, we’ll be alright.” Even as she said it, she was casting her eyes around for something that could get them away. A boat, perhaps, or some sort of Bathysphere that could get them across the waves to the distant horizon. The Sister nodded dreamily, turning back to her play with the other girls. The one whose hand she was holding tugged at her, pointing back to Sofia.

“What about her?” The innocent question stung. Eleanor looked back to her mother, to the woman she had been trying to escape for most of her life. She had turned away from the ocean now, and was coming towards the assembled girls. Dropping the girl’s hand, Eleanor mumbled a quick excuse and stepped forwards, ready to confront her mother once more.

Sofia looked the worse for wear, she could tell that just by looking. Her usually immaculate clothes were soaked through, her skirt torn and blouse dirtied by the trip upwards. Even her hair, usually something Sofia took pride in, was wet and dishevelled. Yet still she stood there, snooty look on her face as ever, looking down at Eleanor through her water-damaged glasses. Just as Eleanor remembered. Just as she had always been.

Eleanor drew herself up to her full height, trying to look determined even as she walked forward, the soles of her boots clanging on the metal platform. She was dressed like a Big Sister, the image of her father in dark metal. Even with the helmet discarded behind her, Eleanor knew she was more imposing than the girl she had been mere days ago, vulnerable and pale in her long white nightgown.

“Mother,” she said, and let the word hang in the air between them.

“Finally, you remember that I am here.” There was a slightly bitter tone to Sofia’s clipped words, and she frowned slightly as she looked on her daughter. Eleanor’s fingers curled around her ADAM needle unconsciously, and her eyes narrowed as she took another step towards Sofia.

“Mother,” she repeated, and it was all she needed to say. Sofia’s lip curled, and her head tipped backwards.

“Eleanor.” Somehow, the single word managed to be a statement. “It’s very impressive, what you have done here.” She began to stalk towards Eleanor, her heels clicking on the platform, sharp and piercing in contrast to the dull clunk of Eleanor’s boots. The girl’s head cocked to one side, recognising the signs of her mother’s speechmaking. Even here, when Rapture was dead, she would have her say. “You saw the beginnings of a Utopia beneath the sea, and yet, you chose to destroy it. Perhaps you thought your own Utopia could be found up here, in the land of people. But people are flawed, Eleanor. We have always been better than them – you have always been better than them. You could have been a Utopian without sin, free from the tyrant that dwells within. The true leader of our Family.”

Sofia’s lips curled into a smirk as she reached Eleanor, reaching her thin fingers out to touch Eleanor’s face. She tilted Eleanor’s head to one side, then the other, her cold hands bearing not even the approximation of motherhood. Eleanor tried to keep her face blank, looking straight into her mother’s eyes. She could see herself in the glass that covered them – a thin girl with scraggly hair, teeth ground together, breathing heavily. She closed her eyes, biting down on her lower lip as her mother continued her rant.

“But it can still be so, Eleanor. Think about this. The bathysphere will still work, and you are dressed to survive down there. We can go back, take what we need from the ruins. ADAM and EVE, solely in our power. There are places out there that we can go, people we can find that will sympathise with our goals. You can still be great, Eleanor. The Lamb of the People once more.”

There was a soft smile on Sofia’s mouth as she looked into her daughter’s face, her fingers stroking the girl’s cheeks. And for a moment, Eleanor saw her as she once had. The mother who stood above her, teaching her lessons, telling her who she should be.

In her mind’s eye, she was five years old once more, sitting at a desk and looking up at Sofia, who stood before her with an audio tape in her hands. She put it down on the desk before the child, taking a seat next to her. Eleanor had always hated that room, she remembered. It was just brown metal walls and sandy wooden desks, with the kind of chairs that made you sit up straight and hurt your back. The only thing she liked was the window that took up almost the whole right wall, through which she could watch as the fish swam by. If she was lucky, she’d see a whale.

Her mother gave her the tape, and told her to listen to it. She said it would help her grow deaf to the self, would help her see other people for who they really were, listen to them properly. Listen to the tape, she said, until you can no longer hear my voice. Then you can see who people really are.

She had whined, of course. She was a child, and although she was a bright child, she still hated sitting in her classes, on her own, while her mother’s voice lectured her from the tapes.

“Can’t you stay here, mum?” she had asked, grabbing onto Sofia’s skirt as the woman went to leave. “Just once?” She was pleading, her voice high and whining in the way only little girls can.

Sofia had snarled, before taking her daughter by the shoulders, looking right at her face. The girl’s hand had flown straight to her plait, rubbing the end of it around in her fingers and closely observing her feet.

“Now, Eleanor.” Sofia had sounded patient, but there was an undertone of annoyance to her words. “You know that I have a lot of important work to do. I don’t have time to stay with you right now.” She had done wrong, Eleanor knew that, but the girl was five years old and already knew that she needed a mother. The girl had looked up at her mother, her eyes wide, almost begging for her to stay.

But her mother had just stood up properly, smoothing out her skirt as she crossed to the door. “The tape should be sufficient. Now get to it.”

Eleanor had spent so long in that room, Sofia’s voice boring its way into her mind as she looked at the sea. The ocean had seemed so limitless to her, so vast and blue, so full of life and potential. As her mother told her to discard her sense of self, Eleanor’s mind had been with the fish that were swimming away from her, into the sunken Atlantis that was Rapture. She had imagined being one of them, swimming with her friends, zooming through the waves, splashing and swirling and laughing and diving before heading upwards, away to the surface, following the refracted glow of the sun through the water.

Now that sun was setting, and her mother’s hands were on her face in a way that they never had before. And in the dim light, through the lines on her face and the smile she wore like a shield, Eleanor could see her mother’s intentions. And the answer came from her heart, from that little voice in the back of her head that might have been her father, from every fibre of her being.

“No, mother.” She took a step back, her mouth open slightly in disgust as she shook her head at her mother. “You can’t tell me what to do now.”

Sofia opened her mouth to say something – to make another speech, no doubt, but Eleanor just chuckled. Taking a deep breath, she looked behind her, motioning to the Sisters to come and stand beside her. One by one, the girls skipped towards her, two of them taking her hands happily. Sofia looked on, exuding an air of ridicule in her very look. She opened her mouth again, but Eleanor cut her off.

“You have controlled me for far too long. But you cannot seem to grasp the truth.” Despite herself, Eleanor knew she was smiling. “I don’t need you. I have Father. I can make my own life, with his guidance. “

Even as she said it, she realised that she believed it. Because it was _true_ , despite everything. She was alone above the world she had known with ten little girls that she was supposed to look after, but with her father there to guide her, she knew that she would find a way. Her father had been there for her when nobody else had. In her sleep, she had seen him, marching through the corridors of Rapture with that would stop her.

“He has brought me out of Rapture, mother. Not you. He has shown me so many things about life and morality that you never would. _You_ have shown me nothing but pain and misdeeds, torturing your own daughter just to live up to some twisted ideals and remain the God of Rapture.” She had retreated back to the edge of the platform by this point, ready to leave in any way she could find. She had thought that Sofia might try and join her, that she would once more be running from her mother, but the woman didn’t move, just watching as Eleanor continued her retreat. “But it never meant anything. Because here we are, above the ocean, and you are nothing.”

She began to cast her eyes around for a way out of there, away from this iron island in the middle of the ocean and towards her salvation, somewhere dry and drenched with sunlight, somewhere that she could live like a normal person, not a messiah.

“I may have spared you, mother, but that doesn’t mean I have to live with you. And it certainly doesn’t mean I have to spend any more time with you.”

There it was. Bobbing beneath her in the water, a bathysphere big enough to fit her and the Sisters, behind a small, rusted ladder that led down from the platform. Keeping her eyes on Sofia, she motioned to it, tapping the backs of each Sister as they climbed down into it. Her mother didn’t move, gripping her arms so hard that her knuckles began to turn white. As soon as the last Sister was in the bathysphere, Eleanor took another step back to the ladder, starting her descent.

“Goodbye,” she said, surprised to hear her voice crack slightly on the word. “And I hope you are happy. I certainly am.”

Safely in the bathysphere, Eleanor reached for the levers. She had never done this before, but something in her brain told her what she should do. Probably the ADAM that her mother had subjected her to when she was younger, filling her mind with stolen memories of skills and places that she had never even seen before. She had to admit, that part of her training had come in handy. The engine chugged into life, and she began to steer away, each Little Sister pressing their hands against the glass window as the sphere turned away from the platform.

“Where will you go?” The call came to her on the wind, almost floating to her from the platform she had abandoned. Despite herself, Eleanor looked back – even though she had promised that she wouldn’t, told herself that her mother was no longer her concern. Sofia stood before the ladder, her hair loose and floating behind her, her skirt whipped to one side in the wind. One hand was clutching the other elbow as she held herself against the cold. It was the first time that Eleanor had seen her mother look vulnerable.

She considered answering her, just for a moment. But Eleanor Lamb had a job to do. She wouldn’t abandon the Little Sisters that were under her charge. She couldn’t look back now, or she would begin to doubt. And Eleanor Lamb could not doubt.

So she turned her head, looking forwards into the rising moon. Its soft, pale beams illuminated the occupants of the bathysphere – the pale arms and grimy faces of the Sisters, the gleam on her own armoured diving suit, the plush but rotting interior of the bathysphere itself. Before her was the horizon, and hopefully land. They had no food, no clean water, nothing to sustain them past a few days. But they were enhanced with ADAM, stronger and more durable than the average human being. She had seen these children walk into boiling water without getting burned, and she herself had almost died so many times over the past day or so. Yet they were all still here, whole and unharmed. Surely, they could make it to land.

Which meant that their problem was what came next. When they reached land, when a bathysphere with eleven superhuman girls reached shore, what would she do then? None of them had properly lived on land before. The girls came from there, but they hadn’t had to be independent before. They were children, of course they hadn’t. Eleanor was the oldest, and she had no clue, no friends, nobody to help her.

That was when she remembered. Doctor Tenenbaum, the woman who had tried to save the Sisters. Tenenbaum, who had gone to Minerva’s Den with a bathysphere bound for the surface. The woman who could have escaped, and who she knew was sympathetic. Maybe she could help, if Eleanor could find her.

But America was a big place. She’d had maps, down in Rapture. Books of geography, telling her all about the world above. Even if she assumed that the Doctor had not gone far from the coast, that still left so many places where she might be. She was the closest thing that Eleanor had to family on the surface, but she barely knew anything about the woman.

Perhaps she was better alone. Eleanor had fought her way out of Rapture, surely normal surface life couldn’t be as difficult. But even as that thought crossed her mind, she dismissed it. Her and the girls, they needed paperwork, some proof that they were people that actually existed, not the vagrants that they really were. How could she explain to the authorities that they were the sole survivors of a dead city, sunk beneath the ocean?

Well. Maybe not ‘sole’. But she didn’t want to think about that, not then. She couldn’t look back, not now, not ever.

So she would endure. That was the word that she was trying to find. She would endure, the same way that she endured Rapture, and the same way that she could endure throughout her future. It wouldn’t be easy, but she would survive.

“Is everyone alright?” she asked softly, her voice barely sounding in the enclosed space of the bathysphere. The Sister’s heads turned, once more in unison as was their way, to stare straight at her. Their mutual gaze was unnerving, but she tried not to be visibly unnerved. After all, they were just children. They couldn’t help what had been done to them, in their troubled childhoods. She asked the question again, louder, and one by one the girls nodded, smiling at her sat on the chairs, swinging their legs forwards and back. One of the girls had loosed her hair from her ponytail, and it sat limply on her shoulder as they moved through the waves. Another was holding a makeshift toy in the image of a Big Daddy, softly singing to it as she rocked it from side to side.

That was another concern, of course. These were stolen children, taken away from their lives and homes by her mother’s minions. Was it even possible to take them back to their real homes after what had been done to them? How would she do that, when the girls didn’t remember who they were? They seemed perfectly content where they were, sitting quietly next to each other in the middle of the sea. But then, the Sisters always seemed content wherever they were, that was part of who they were. Eleanor remembered that much from when she was a child, how happy the world seemed when the ADAM slug was controlling your mind, how shiny and perfect everything seemed. And then the slug was ripped from your body, and the world became cold and cruel once more, but you no longer had the capacity to deal with it. So you retreated into yourself, for what else was there to do?

_You grow strong. You grow into yourself. You become who you are._

The thought once more came from the back of her head, that little dark place in her mind that she still couldn’t quite identify. Was it her, was it her father? She still couldn’t tell.

Subject Delta, the monster created from man that became man once more, was sat on her shoulder, watching the world through her eyes. Ever since she picked up that ADAM needle, she knew how this story would end. Her father would die, because he was dead already. But that didn’t mean that he had to be gone forever. He was with her, and he could guide her, and maybe that was enough to get her through the coming days.

She still didn’t know what she was going to do. She had no idea what was in store for her when they reached the mainland, the single mother of a dozen stolen children that she had never seen before that day. But with that tiny presence in the back of her head, the little voice that was even now guiding her, steering her towards what was right, rather than what she had been taught, she knew that she could survive.

Eleanor’s hands moved on the lever, spurring them further and further out into the water. She wasn’t even sure how to navigate properly, but as her hands worked the levers she found them slotting into pre-programmed positions, places that they had already been before. Maybe the sphere was on a predetermined course to the American coast, and she had nothing to worry about after all. That would make sense – there had always been some trade with the surface, no matter how much Andrew Ryan tried to squash it. This might have been an old smuggler sphere, on a set course for safety.

Safety. Eleanor rolled the word over in her mind. A place where she wouldn’t have to worry, wouldn’t have to fight for her life. A place that she could finally feel at home. Eleanor knew she sounded delusional, knew she was looking too far ahead, but she felt like she could really make a life now. Away from Rapture, the ocean, her mother – the Great Chain that had held her down for all her life. For the first time, she was finally free.

And when the sun began to rise again, Eleanor Lamb could have sworn that she could see the land off in the distance.


	4. I Wanted To Save You

_Chapter Four – I Wanted To Save You_

All around her, the world was grey.

Grey walls, grey floors, grey furniture made of metal. It was cold beneath her hands as she picked up her tools from the steel bowl. The room was big but bare, made of concrete as far as the eye could see. All around her was the equipment of her trade – a little shabby, a little out of date, for her benefactors were not exactly the richest of people. Once upon a time, perhaps, they might have been, but it had been a long time since Brigid Tenenbaum had any credibility in her field. Too long spent beneath the ocean for that.

The only colour in the room, besides the stained brown of her cardigan and skirt, was from the man who sat on the chair in the centre. It was a repurposed dentist’s chair, its upholstery worn down to a sludgy brown, occasional springs sticking from the side. The man gripped the arms tightly with his gloved hands, a tube running down his armoured arm and into an IV drip. He was asleep, or at least he was as far as she could tell. Tenenbaum had never been sure exactly what affected a Big Daddy, and she had very limited resources.

Nevertheless, she was determined to finish her work. She had sworn to herself that she would fix him, after all it had taken to drag Charles Milton Porter out of Rapture.

Next to her, the bulky machine of the Thinker whirred and clunked, printing out sheets of paper for her to survey. The cure to the ADAM sickness, and she had nobody to test it on. Rapture was gone, destroyed not long after she and Porter had ascended to the surface in their stolen bathysphere. And every splicer there had gone down with the ship.

Adjusting the rough cotton mask that covered her face, Tenenbaum took a syringe of ADAM from her bag. It was a precious material now, she supposed. There was no retrieving her miracle cure now, not from the bottom of the sea. The idea should have brought her some relief, but it left her with a sense of unease. She still had a supply, and where there was ADAM there was risk. She knew that if it was known that she had ADAM, people would be out to take it from her, and she could not see that happen again. Better to use it now, before it fell into the wrong hands.

She walked over to where Porter was sitting, the slight mechanical rasp of his breath audible in the large room. She had already stripped away a part of his armour, revealing the dark, scarred flesh of his arm underneath. Carefully, almost tenderly, she placed the needle in his arm, before depressing the plunger. She watched as the glowing red liquid drained into his arm, changing his biology as it washed through his veins, hopefully beginning to revert him to the way he was before he was turned over to them.

From where she stood, she could see him – a few pictures of him and his wife that she had rescued from Rapture were pinned to the walls, for her reference. Sometimes, while she was working to find the way to change him back, she would find him sitting in that main room, staring at the pictures through his visor. She would stand and try and figure out what he was thinking, the brilliant mind beneath that blank helmet. When he had his voice back, she might ask him.

Once the ADAM had drained from the syringe, she stood back, placing it on a nearby table. She had modified that batch herself so that it would rewrite his biology, change him back into the man he once was. She had seen the initial Big Daddy experiments, knew what a mess was underneath the suits; the twisted, scarred skin, fused to the suit, that bubbled and rippled as the suit was welded to their body, scarred pink raw. Porter was a mess under the metal, that much she knew without looking. But soon, he would return to himself. She only had two more ADAM syringes left. Hopefully, that would be enough to return him to himself.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door clicking closed at the other side of the room – she turned to see a girl, standing at the back of the room with her arms folded. Tenenbaum lowered her mask, nodding at her and beckoning her forwards. The girl scuttled across the room to join her, glancing at Porter with an unreadable expression.

“Do you need any help?” the girl asked, looking up at Tenenbaum.

She shook her head. “No, thank you. This is not a difficult task.”

The girl took another step forward, her curled hand touching Porter’s armour. She took in a deep breath, closing her eyes, and this time Tenenbaum could tell what she was thinking. The scientist stood next to her, and out of courtesy said nothing. After a few minutes, she turned back to Tenenbaum.

“The Little Sisters are asking questions again,” she said, almost guiltily. “And since I couldn’t answer, they told me to get you.” Tenenbaum bit her lip, nodding.

Initially, she had only planned for herself and Porter. She would restore him to his humanity, and then they would continue with what little life they had in the outside world. But a week after they had struggled their way to the surface, six days after she had set herself up in this warehouse that she had purchased before she left for Rapture, there was a knock at the door.

When she answered it, she found herself face to face with an image from the past. Eleanor Lamb, flanked by about ten Little Sisters. She had ushered them in, interrogating Eleanor in a hushed whisper. Apparently, they had come to the surface in a bathysphere, and found their way to the coast of America. Alone, freezing and scared, Eleanor had gone with the girls to a public library, looking up her name everywhere they could find. It had taken hours, but eventually they had found a reference to her buying the warehouse, and made their way out to it, hoping to find somewhere that they could stay.

She installed the Sisters in a room, asking Eleanor to watch over them. She remembered, years ago, how she had rehabilitated the first batch of Sisters – she could do the same with these new girls. Eleanor cycled her time between looking after them, trawling through missing person’s list to try and find out who they were, and helping Tenenbaum around the lab. Now she did whatever she could, using her mother’s incessant psychology training to help the Sisters while Tenenbaum was busy. She had been an asset, Tenenbaum had to admit, even though she knew that the girl needed help as much as the Sisters.

“Thank you, Eleanor,” she said, waving the girl away. “I shall join you in a moment, when I am finished with Mister Porter.”

As Eleanor scurried away, Tenenbaum took another syringe of ADAM from her bag, slowly injecting it into his upper arm where she had stripped away his armour. This time, she could see it working; see the skin rippling as the drug washed through his veins, reforming him back into the man he once was. These last doses of ADAM were the most important, she knew. They would make him back into the person he was, give him back the tongue that had been ripped from him, the body that had been mutated and warped beyond all recognition.

Her thoughts turned, as they often did back to Jack. He was supposed to be coming at some point, bringing the girls with him. As soon as they were off school, and Jack could get enough time off work. Between the two of them, they had scraped together enough money to pay for their transport. Their help would be invaluable, she had to admit, especially if the girls were as keen to help as they had sounded on the telephone.

Next to her, Porter grunted, a low mechanical sound that alerted Tenenbaum to him. He was waking up, and a little too soon. She hurried over to one of the cold tables, taking a bag of liquid and replacing the one on Porter’s IV. She wasn’t sure how well the anaesthetic worked – it wasn’t exactly her field, and she had been forced to improvise with it. But Porter seemed to be responding well.

She took up the last syringe of ADAM, gently patting Porter’s exposed arm before injecting him with it. His arm flexed, and began to twitch as the drug flushed through him. Picking up a scalpel, Tenenbaum grimaced beneath her mask. It was time for the hard part.

The ADAM would have done most of the job separating Porter’s body from the Big Daddy suit, but she needed to complete the job herself. Tensing herself, she slipped her fingers beneath the metal of his arm, ready to strip away Porter’s metal exoskeleton. Holding the scalpel in her right hand, she slid it between the cracks in the arm, severing the connection that held the armour together. She then repeated the motion on the other side, before pulling lightly at the metal. It came away in her hand, revealing Porter’s skin below. It was almost grey from lack of light, covered in still-healing scars from where it had been bound to the suit – but it was recognisable as an arm. Beneath her mask, Tenenbaum grinned. So far, so good. Now for the rest.

*

When Charles Milton Porter woke up, he was lying in the same chair that he had fallen asleep in. Everything was the same as it had been – the same grey, concrete walls surrounding him, the same plaster ceiling above him, the same uncomfortable springs of the chair beneath him. And yet, there was something different. Something new. Something that Charles had not felt in uncountable years.

He blinked, his vision blurring as his eyes adjusted to being awake again. A silhouette began to loom above him, the vague outline of a persons he could not see beneath the strong lights of the warehouse. He blinked again, and the figure solidified into a person; brown hair, tied back in a scruffy ponytail, a stained cardigan, a long skirt. Doctor Tenenbaum, the woman who had saved him from Rapture. There was something in her hand.

She offered it to him, brandishing it in front of him. He reached out to take it, and paused. There was something wrong. His hand was not how he remembered it. It was smaller, slimmer, less bulky. There was no symbol etched into it, no marker to identify him. His hand was made not of metal and cloth but flesh.

He sat there for a moment, just staring at it. His hand was no longer covered in a glove, but exposed. The flesh that had been burned into the suit was free. Slowly, he lowered it, bringing his head down to look at his body, scarcely believing what his eyes were telling him.

There was his body. He was small, too thin, his skin too ashen and crossed with numerous scars. Yet as he watched, the scars were already beginning to heal, sinking into his skin until they were almost invisible. He was covered with a blanket, coarse and woollen, and the sensation was strange on his skin. He could feel, beneath him, the plastic covering of the chair, a metal spring jutting through the upholstery. It was the first thing he had felt for years.

Charles looked back up at Tenenbaum, seeing her properly. She had bags under her eyes, and her skin was almost translucently pale. Her hair was dishevelled and coming loose from its ponytail, and her clothes were stained and torn. Yet she was smiling, a small smile that barely lifted the corners of her cheeks. Once more, she offered the object to him, and he took it.

It was a mirror, silver lined and heavy to the touch. He weighed it up in his hand, fingers stroking up and down the handle. The reflective surface was pointed down, so that all he would see was the tarnished metal of the back, too dirty to see anything properly. Charles closed his eyes, taking a breath inwards, as he turned it over.

There was a soft sound, as Tenenbaum backed away from him slightly. With a lump in his throat, Charles opened his eyes, bringing the mirror up to his face.

He looked terrible, that was the first thing he noticed. His eyes were sunken into his face, thinner than he had ever seen it. There was no hair on his head, his scalp was crossed with thin scars and wounds. His cheeks were hollow, his face pinched. The overall look was of somebody who hadn’t eaten in years, which he realised was true. And yet his eyes looked the same as they always had; bright, alert, the colour of dark chocolate. With a jolt, he realised that he wasn’t wearing his glasses, and yet his eyesight was perfect. Maybe Tenenbaum had found a way to heal that, too.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

His voice was hoarse, croaky and rasping in his throat. It hurt to speak, too, and Charles put a hand to his throat as the words came. They were the first words that had come from his lips in at least a decade. The thought of it was unsettling.

Tenenbaum started, as though she hadn’t expected him to speak at all. Or perhaps she was just unused to his voice, low and stilted. “It is not a perfect reconstruction, I am afraid,” she said, waving her hands as she spoke. “You should be thankful so much of you was left under that suit.”

Charles’ hand stroked his throat, and he swallowed in an attempt to moisten it before he spoke again. “You did a fine job.”

Tenenbaum didn’t respond, simply picking up a bundle of clothes from the corner of the room. “These should fit,” she said, handing them to him. “There is some food and water next to you, but you should not eat too much. Your body is acclimatising to it. I shall be outside if you need me.” With that, she turned and crossed to the door, leaving him alone.

Charles stood, his legs shaking as he did. The floor was cold and dusty underneath his feet, and he leaned on the chair, supporting his frail body. He placed the clothes on the chair, carefully looking through them. She had given him a white button-up shirt and brown trousers, simple clothes similar to what he used to wear. It took him fifteen minutes to dress himself properly.

Clothed, Charles then looked at the food Tenenbaum had left. It was simple, a plate of three ham sandwiches and a jug of water, but he gulped it down like it was a banquet. The water was cold against his sore throat, the food almost instantly filled his aching stomach, until he felt like he could eat no more. Suddenly, he felt too exposed in the large room, and went to the door to let Tenenbaum back in. As she saw him open it, her eyes lit up, and her smile seemed more genuine.

They sat for a moment in silence, not sure of what to say, but eventually Tenenbaum began to talk. She told him of Rapture, of how it was destroyed not too long ago. How Eleanor and the Sisters escaped to the surface, and left Sofia Lamb alone in the middle of the ocean. How she had been trying to save them, save them all, however she could ever since. Some of it he knew, from when he was still a Big Daddy. Some of it was news to him, and he listened with a mounting sense of incredulity to what had happened to their haven, their hell, under the sea.

When she had finished, Charles sat back, what she had said running through his mind. He coughed, tapping his throat, before asking Tenenbaum the question that was on his mind. “What are you going to do now? I mean, Rapture’s gone. There’s nothing left for anyone down there. That story’s over.”

“In my experience, Mister Porter, stories like that hardly ever end.” She shrugged, looking off to the side. “This is not the first time I have visited the surface since Rapture’s fall. I suppose I shall have to find more legitimate work. A far cry from what I did in Rapture, of course.”

Charles shook his head. “You’ve done some good things, Doctor.”

“Only fixing the damage I have caused. And even then, not enough.” She paused, staring into the distance. “But there is no time to reflect on this now,” she said, waving her hand dismissively.

“You sure you won’t be alone here?”

“I will be fine, Mister Porter.” She smiled, looking back to him. “And you?” Charles looked at her quizzically, and she clarified. “What are you going to do?”

“I want to go back to England. Soon as I’m well again.” He sighed, scratching the back of his head. “Say a proper goodbye to Pearl. And then…well, I guess I’ll see. Go back to computing, I suppose. Back to reality.”

He swallowed, looking back at the ground. Could that really be it? All those years of Rapture life, and now they were just supposed to go back to the real world like nothing had ever happened. All this time, and he could barely believe how he had used to feel, back when he was covered with the dust of World War Two, with the ashes of his life.

“I used to love Rapture,” he said, and Tenenbaum gave him a strange look. He shrugged, attempting to justify himself. “Looking out from beneath the waves, seeing that ocean stretching above you, the sea life surrounding you, all the wonders of the deep blue. Compared to where I was coming from, the bombed-out shell of London…it was beautiful.”

He closed his eyes, remembering. “Then came the Plasmids, and the war. Ryan showing himself for what he truly was, and a lot more people besides. Nothing beautiful can ever last, Doctor. That’s what I learned, down in the depths.”

Turning, he looked back to Tenenbaum, resilience in his eyes. “But that doesn’t mean we should give up. If I’d given up after my first war, after I lost Pearl…it would have been so easy to, as well. It was my fault she died. If I’d just paid more attention, if I’d just been there – she’d still be alive.”

“Herr Porter-“ She shook her head, leaning forwards, but Charles held up a hand to stop her.

“Hear me out, Doctor, I’m almost done. I came down to Rapture to forget, and all I ended up doing was making things worse. And now here I am, with nothing but my name, no idea of where to go or what to do…but I’m alive. And I can do whatever I want.” He smiled, sitting back. It was true, he realised. He was free. They all were.

“Mister Porter.” Tenenbaum’s arms were wrapped around her body, holding herself tightly.

“It’s not your fault, the War.”

She shook her head, looking down at the ground. “You go too far.”

“But it wasn’t.”

She bit her lip, still not meeting his eye. “The things I did…they can never be forgiven. Not even by you. I am just sorry I could not save more.”

Tenenbaum turned, seemingly unable to look at him. Charles placed a hand on her back, gently rubbing her shoulder.

“You saved me. Those little girls. Eleanor Lamb. Isn’t the quote ‘to save one life is to save the world entire’? And you’ve been doing a lot of saving.”

There was a pause, Charles gently caressing Tenenbaum’s shoulder as she stared at the ground. Then, finally, her face turned back to him, the corner of her lip curved upwards in a smile.

“Thank you, Mister Porter.”

“No, Doctor. Thank you.”

*

Jack sat in the side room of the warehouse, watching the chaos. It was Christmas, 1968 – nine months after the fall of Rapture, and eight months since Tenenbaum had called him again, telling him that she was back on the surface. That she was alive.

Tenenbaum and Eleanor had fitted this room out well, probably because people were actually supposed to live there. The floor was carpeted, in an almost cheerful purple, with light pink wallpaper on the walls. In front of him were ten identical beds, steel frames with pink sheets and various stuffed toys scattered over the bedspreads. Next to each bed was a brightly coloured box, full of various toys and crayons for the girls to play with. On the walls, little bits of tinsel hung, stuck up there with tape by Eleanor, who had also managed to bring in a small Christmas tree, which sat in a pot in the corner. Eleanor had shown them the photographs that she had taken of the Little Sisters decorating it, their faces more individual now that the Rapture conditioning was breaking. The Sisters themselves were sat in a circle across from him, listening intently as his daughters told them stories from the picture books that Jack had scavenged from their attic.

He, Tenenbaum and Eleanor were sat on a sofa, watching the ex-Little Sisters in their play. Both Eleanor and Tenenbaum looked particularly serious, the latter taking notes on a clipboard that she always seemed to be carrying with her these days. She had thrown herself into the task of rehabilitating the Sisters, working tirelessly to find their real homes and rehabilitate them, breaking their mental conditioning. So far, it was working, although it was a slow process. She had expected that, however, from her past experience with Jack and the girls – but that didn’t make it any less frustrating.

Eleanor, next to her, was leaning forward, observing the girls as they listened to the story. She was working in a local café along with helping Tenenbaum with the Sisters, bringing in some cash to help feed and clothe the girls.

Jack himself felt a little out of sorts. None of the new Sisters could understand sign language, so he could only talk with one of the others translating for him, so he was often relegated to the background in conversations. He couldn’t be sure, of course, but he thought the new Sisters were sort of scared of him.

Even Eleanor didn’t understand him, which made trying to share their shared experiences difficult. They were both children of Rapture, raised by the elite to try and take over the city, yet he was an adult and she still seemed so young. He turned to her, tapping her shoulder to get her attention.

“What do you want to do after this, Eleanor?” he signed, catching Tenenbaum’s eye to get her to translate.

She repeated his question to the girl, who just shrugged. “Doctor Tenenbaum has been talking about me going to university and getting a degree. I’m not sure if it’s what I want.”

“I think you could do well,” Tenenbaum said encouragingly, giving her a small smile, but Eleanor shook her head.

“When I left Rapture, I was full of such drive to change things, yet I’ve spent this whole time not sure of myself or what I want to do. I think I can wait a little longer, until we start finding the girl’s homes at least.” She looked at the ground, her cheeks flushing, but Jack was nodding frantically. He would have liked getting an education, but a stable home for the girls had come first.

“What about you?” he signed to Tenenbaum, who sighed, evading his look.

“It has been more than twenty years, Jack. I am not sure what I will do with myself, now that Rapture is no more.” She stared at the ground, looking almost wistful. “Now that Mister Porter has returned to England, and once the girls are rehabilitated, I will have nothing left.”

Jack frowned. “What have you done for nine months up here?” he signed, genuinely curious. They hadn’t had a lot of contact before they had managed to meet up. She had always said that she was busy, but he was never sure what with.

“Oh, this and that. My name does not mean so much since I disappeared, but once I was renowned as a geneticist. There are still some little things I can do, to scrape a living.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something.”

“Maybe. For now, I get by.” She shrugged, and Jack could see that it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss. He just leaned back, trying to think of a way to change the subject.

“Let’s just enjoy this. It is Christmas, after all.”

Tenenbaum laughed, shaking her head. “Perhaps for you. I have always celebrated Hanukkah, but you only arrived two days ago.”

Jack grinned. “Sorry, I forgot.”

Before them, the girls had finished reading to the Sisters, whose attention had already started to wander. Two of them had retreated to a corner, where they were drawing pictures of Eleanor with a pack of crayons; some of the others had started an impromptu game of tag with Masha and Rosie, who were probably more enthused about the game than they should have been. The air was filled with the sounds of girlish laughter and running feet as the children scattered here and there, giggling at the teenagers as they failed to catch up to them.

One of the girls – a blonde kid who had, just weeks ago, remembered that her old name was Cindy – ran up to Eleanor, tapping her hand with a giggle. “You’re it!” she cried, before darting to the other corner of the room, almost barrelling into the Christmas tree in her enthusiasm. After a split second’s deliberation, Eleanor stood, rushing towards the small knot of Sisters, who scattered once more with yet more delighted shrieks.

Tenenbaum sat back, scribbling something on her clipboard with a grin. She was almost glowing with pride at the ex-Sisters, softness in her eyes as they played. She reminded Jack of himself, back in the first year that he was looking after the girls – the almost parental joy at seeing them becoming more and more like normal girls, and less the Rapture-manufactured clones that they had become.

Jack leaned forward, signing to Tenenbaum with a wry smile. “Whatever you do, you have to admit – it’s a lot better than Rapture.”

Tenenbaum smiled. “Yes. This is true.”

And there they stayed for a while, watching as the children laughed and played in the tinsel-strewn warehouse side room. Soon, it would be time to put the Sisters to bed, to end their Christmas and retreat back to the little room that Eleanor and Tenenbaum shared to sleep. But for now, they would let them play, and enjoy what little remained of their childhoods. Because for once, everything seemed right in the world.

They were on the surface, they were alive, and they were safe. Maybe, for the first time in their lives, that was all they needed.


End file.
